Caring Without Carrying Other People's Burdens

You know how when you decide to teach a thing, the Universe often goes, “Oh great! You must want mastery over that thing! Let me give you an opportunity or twelve to show you all the ways you can upgrade your skills on that!”

Last week I started drafting a free online training called, “Not Yours to Carry: 3 Tools to Set Down Other People’s Energy and Come Home to Yourself.” And then, as I maybe should have expected, life hit me with a surprise.

A dear community member and coworker unexpectedly died last week. And while it hasn’t been publicly confirmed, many who knew him well knows he struggled with suicidal ideation for a long time.

While a part of me fears that writing about my process publicly will seem opportunistic, anyone who’s followed me for a while knows that sharing about my inner life is often the way I simultaneously heal from a thing, and also try to be of service to others.

Because there are many who are grieving his death, and because I can only speak to my own experience, I’m going to stick to the lessons I’m personally learning in all this. My disclaimer here is that in no way am I suggesting that the way I’m dealing is the “right” way, or that there is such a thing in general as a “right” way to do anything — let alone grieve.

Turning towards the personal lessons I’m re-learning now are part of how I cultivate resilience in the face of loss. So, dear reader / listener, I encourage you to take what resonates for you here and leave the rest. However you deal with grief is the absolute right way for you, and I deeply appreciate y’all for bearing witness to me in this.

If you’re new here, hi. I’m ionsul ferrin and this is the Rooted Source Podcast where I share perspectives on personal and collective healing. I’m a Niasziih healing practitioner, and a group connection facilitator with a non-profit called SeekHealing. This podcast is for the sensitive souls out there who deeply want to heal the world, but who also want to enjoy life along the way.

In this episode I want to reveal what I’m currently learning about walking the fine line between caring — and carrying other’s burdens in a way that doesn’t actually serve me, or serve the collective. Seems to me pretty much everyone could all use some amount of help with this. In the current polycrisis where we could literally find a new thing to be upset about every minute we spend on the internet, protecting our energy is more important than ever.

And I know there’s a paradox here. We’re all One, so to say, “That’s someone else’s burden, that’s not mine to bear,” might feel selfish or even wrong to those of us who feel our interconnection so strongly.

Yet letting ourselves be drained by chronic anxiety and overwhelming grief at the state of the world does nothing really helpful. It just makes us less likely to be resourced enough to show up for the other people in our lives.

So, the balance we need to strike is between allowing ourselves to care — fully — and yet to somehow not be bogged down by that care. To not let it make us feel defeated or hopeless, or cause us to leak energy to oppressive systems. In this episode, I want to share what helps me to keep that balance.

The Backstory

My personal healing journey kick-started in 2019 when two organizations entered my life. The first was SeekHealing, a revolutionary non-profit that’s working to end the loneliness epidemic and deaths of despair by creating safer spaces for genuine human connection. The other was wildernessFusion, the Niasziih healing school.

I normally focus this podcast on the latter, and how Niasziih changed my life. But today I want to put the spotlight on SeekHealing. Partly because my friend who passed was a colleague at SeekHealing where we co-facilitated groups together several times — but also because it represents the crux of what I think really keeps us in balance, which is mutually supportive human connection.

To start off with, I’ll explain a little more about the organization. SeekHealing was founded by someone who has become a close friend. Jenesis moved to Asheville in 2018 after going on their own healing journey in which they saw that one of the biggest gaps in the recovery industry is a lack of consistent social support once someone is done with treatment.

People often go into recovery centers or other treatment facilities, just to be spit back out into a world where they have little to no genuinely healthy personal relationships. So Jenesis started SeekHealing with the intention of creating safer, authentic spaces for anyone on a healing journey to come and experience the life-changing medicine of judgment-free compassionate connection. And it has been radically successful for a tiny little bootstrap organization, even despite consistent funding challenges.

Since 2018, SeekHealing has served thousands of people from all walks of life, not just those who consider themselves in recovery. I’ve been facilitating groups and trainings with them since 2019, and I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard things like:

“These groups saved my life.”

“I wouldn’t still be here if I hadn’t found this community.”

And —

“This has helped me more than anything else I’ve tried.”

There are neurochemical reasons for this. The short story is that we are wired for connection as social beings and when those connection needs aren’t met, that’s when we reach for other behaviors and substances to soothe the immense pain of loneliness.

But that’s a deep dive for another episode.

Because there’s also a paradox that’s relevant here. I’ve also seen people find SeekHealing like they’ve finally found water in a desert, which makes them put the community on a pedestal of sorts. But before too long they realize that people are people everywhere you go and you’re not always going to immediately like everyone you come in contact with, even in a radically accepting community like SeekHealing.

So then people often go one of two ways. They either leave SeekHealing feeling disillusioned, or they choose to do the inner work to grow and evolve within the context of community.

And that’s the deeper lesson I want to name here:

While we absolutely need close relationships in our lives, relationships also take hard work. And part of that essential work is recognizing and maintaining our own personal boundaries. Without healthy boundaries, dysfunction is quick to follow.

Because the reality is that absolutely everyone is carrying their own burdens of pain and trauma. And while it’s so beautiful to help relieve that burden by showing care for others, it’s also impossible to carry it for anyone else.

And that’s where I see a whole lot of empathic, compassionate people struggle. It’s ridiculously common for those of us who care deeply about others to be some degree of chronically burned out, stressed out, and fearing about the state of the world. But living with that degree of stress and exhaustion genuinely doesn’t help anyone.

I want the heart-centered empaths of the world to come into their power — personally and politically — so I’m currently centering my work on doing what I can to help make that happen. If you’re interested in that, stay with me, I have some tools to offer in a minute. But first, I’m going to share a bit about what made me an empath in the first place. I think you might see yourself in some of my story.

A Healthy Measure of Empathy

Since my friend passed last week, I’ve had all the common reactions that we tend to have when someone we know takes their life.

“What else could I have done? Could we have done? We should have taken his depression and cries for help more seriously. Maybe then he wouldn’t have done it.” These were the flavor of my initial thoughts.

But a dear friend who lost one of her sisters to suicide assured me, “There’s nothing anyone could have done.”

And another beloved reminded me that, “We often think that ‘It shouldn’t have been this way.’ That it wasn’t his time. But we don’t know the Universe’s plan. Maybe it was the exact right time.”

Which I have to accept as truth if I don’t want to argue with reality.

So why do I feel like it would make me a bad person if I stopped imagining his pain? Why does it feel like a betrayal of his memory to allow myself to be at peace about his decision to leave?

For that matter, how can I let myself center my own peace when the whole world is suffering so intensely??

Another ICE murder. The genocide in Palestine. The looming threats of AI and mass surveillance and nuclear war and environmental collapse.

Holy Goddess do we have a lot of collective fear and pain to manage right now. It could literally drown us if we’re not careful.

So how do we choose when to care, and when to detach? Do we really have a choice about detaching? And if we choose detachment, does that say something bad about us? Would that make us a selfish, evil person?

Personally, I know I can’t help but care. I was a big fan of Buddhism for a while and logically agreed with the idea that “attachment creates suffering.” But I was never able to get anywhere close to achieving a state of true detachment. Intently caring is just how I’m wired. I remember wondering before I was even out of grade school, “Why is the world this way? And how can we fix it?”

I like the idea that some souls came into this lifetime with the mission of assisting in the positive evolution of humanity. But on a more grounded level, I think the simple reality is that most humans are just wired to care.

I mean all kinds of science confirms that we evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to be distinctly “prosocial” animals.

According to explorepsychology.com:

Prosocial behavior involves actions that are designed to help other people or to benefit society as a whole. Examples of prosocial behaviors include being kind, comforting, generous, or helpful.

When people engage in prosocial behaviors, they often do so because they are concerned, compassionate, and empathetic. They want to ensure others have what they need, including support and protection.

Now I know some of you are already thinking this, so let me clarify — yes, there is a small percentage of the population that genetically lacks the wiring for empathy. I released a previous episode about psychopathy and how we are globally in a situation where removing psychopathy from positions of power is the solution to saving humanity, but let’s stay on topic.

The point is, the vast majority of us are hardwired to care about each other. The only reason most people would not care is because their own suffering and self-protection mechanisms are too great.

And yet there are also certainly those of us who swing in the opposite direction of caring possibly too much. It’s hard to say what’s nature and what’s nurture when it comes to any personality trait, and I think that’s particularly true for those of us who are highly empathic.

To start with, I definitely believe that I was born an empath, and that many people are. Studies have been done that show that in most mammal populations, a certain percentage of any group’s members are born highly sensitive. And that’s beneficial for the whole. It’s a life-saving alarm bell if one antelope can sense the tiger over the ridge before any of its pack-mates have caught wind of it.

We humans might not live in survival packs here in the modern world, but that doesn’t mean that our genetic wiring has caught up yet. Some of us are literally born more sensitive.

Yet I also recognize that the environment I grew up in dramatically shaped me as well. Both of my parents were emotionally immature and suffered from their own mental health struggles. So I learned very early that if I could predict and interpret their moods, and change my behavior accordingly, I was much more likely to get my needs met.

That started a long arc of being highly codependent and ignoring my own needs in order to center the needs of everyone else around me.

It also set up a pattern of taking on way more of other people’s emotional burdens than was really safe or sane. I often had friends that made me feel like the invisible side-kick. And romantic partners who treated me more like a mother figure to use and disregard, than someone who deserved mutual support.

But that wasn’t really the fault of those friends and partners. It was what I was energetically calling in at the time. Erasure and neglect felt like a safe, familiar zone to me.

Even more than that, actually being seen — letting my own needs and desires be visible — felt incredibly dangerous. Every part of my nervous system would anxiously go on high alert when there was an opportunity for that. So I avoided revealing my needs and desires like the plague. It was so much easier to gravitate towards those who were happy to let me be the invisible helper.

But then, of course, I would always inevitably end up burned out. The resentment would slowly, steadily grow until I was suddenly at a breaking point and would abruptly leave those relationships. I’m not proud of it. I know I hurt many people with that behavior pattern.

But I also understand that I was just doing the best I knew how to do at the time.

I’ll never forget the shadowwork workshop where I realized that I was a runner. Yes, it would take me a long time to run in most cases. But when I decided to, there was no looking back. And it wasn’t actually very kind to those I claimed to care about.

Not only that, though, I was also SOUL DEEP TIRED of not being seen. Of not feeling met or reciprocated, or like I really mattered to anyone.

So, I knew I had to make a change. And it’s really primarily because of my Niasziih healing training that I was able to make that shift. But SeekHealing also played a massive role for me.

7 years on, I’m indescribably grateful to say that now I have close friendships that are not only mutually supportive, they often call me into the spotlight on purpose. I have chosen sisterhood with at least 8 women who I know deeply care about me getting my needs met, and who support me anytime, just as I support them. It makes life better in a way that I can’t even really put words to. Eventually I’m going to make T-shirts that say, “Behind every woman is a circle of great women.”

Not only that, I also recently started seeing someone who’s showing up for me in ways I previously feared a man never would. He has physically and energetically held me while I cried, brought me medicine when I was sick, and receives my most vulnerable heart shares with utmost care and compassion.

My point being — I never could have called in this changed relationship landscape if I hadn’t allowed myself to care about myself equal to the amount I was caring about everyone else. And that requires putting down what’s not mine to carry.

Caring vs. Carrying

Again, it’s often a fine line between caring, and carrying other people’s burdens. And there’s no one right formula. I’m still figuring it out on a daily basis myself. But there are three things that I find help me most when it comes to striking a healthy balance. Those things are self-care, energetic hygiene, and living my purpose.

Self-care centers around tracking my own well-being as my primary point of discernment. Where I used to come from the core belief that, “I have to make everyone around me happy in order to be safe,” I now understand that I have literally no control over anyone else’s happiness. And that in order to feel safe, I have to prioritize my own happiness.

Besides, the reality is, I’m not actually that powerful.

Yes, I have influence. I can often make someone’s day better by offering them care. I can even support someone to make deeper shifts when I’m providing a Niasziih healing session. But everyone’s path is their own. I don’t control any of it. I can’t make anyone happy. Not long-term.

I’ve come to see spiritual beliefs as those we adopt in order to comfort ourselves in the face of the unknown, and this as a form of self-care as well. One belief that really comforts me is that this lifetime is just one in a nearly infinite number of lifetimes, and that even if I don’t see the point of someone’s suffering in this lifetime, there are forces at play that are far bigger and wiser than me.

I once heard it put: “Who am I to presume to know what this soul needs?”

In the case of my friend who just left this life, I could assume that something went terribly wrong for him to have been suffering so much. Or I can assume that was something he just needed to experience in this lifetime. And it offers me a lot of comfort to think that his suffering is now over.

I believe “spirituality” is only meaningful in so far as it empowers us to be more unconditionally loving towards others. If what I choose to believe makes me a more resilient person, I see that as net-positive.

Which is also why I see centering self-care as a spiritual practice.

When I thought having zero self-care made me a better person, I was actually more prone to hurting others. More prone to dipping out on the relationship, yes. But also more prone to resentment and subtle ghosting, like being flakey and inconsistent. I was also more prone to having angry outbursts towards my kids, because I was so internally pressurized around rarely getting my own needs met.

I learned early in my parenting journey that to be the parent I wanted to be, I needed to care for myself enough to stay regulated and grounded in my nervous system. That was literally the foundation for every other way that I wanted to show up.

It helped me see that caring for myself isn’t selfish. It’s what allows me to have a full cup so that I can be a resource for others.

And it also doesn’t mean that I always have to be a resource for others, either. Which brings me to my second tool of energetic hygiene.

Now, I admit I don’t love the word “hygiene.” For me it evokes sterile hospital rooms and, for some reason, diapers. But when I looked up the definition it really is the best fit. According to dictionary.com, the meanings for “hygiene” include: 1. the science that deals with the preservation of health; and 2. a beneficial or recommended practice or set of practices.

And this fits. Because there are so many things we can and should do to maintain our energetic hygiene. The thing is — it takes consistency, even when we think we don’t need it. My beloved recently used this metaphor, and I thought it was pretty apt:

If someone got dirt on us, we would see it. We’d be able to wash the dirt off and that would be that. But when it comes to taking on other people’s energy, we can’t see it. That doesn’t mean that it’s not real or it’s not happening. It very much is. But because we don’t have a visual cue as a reminder, we need to remember to do our energetic hygiene practices whether we think we need them or not.

Honestly, this is the purpose of the free training I’m putting together, and that’s going to be an hour long. So I can’t get in depth here the way I know many of you would like, but let me just offer some quick tricks that have worked well for me in the past:

* Running cold water on my wrists and hands and feeling any energetic residue being pulled out and drained away with the water.

* Putting bare feet on the earth and letting the energy be drawn out of my feet.

* Expanding my own energy field and imagining pushing out energy that’s not mine.

And one more that I’ve been doing most often lately — I imagine other people’s energy like spiderwebs sticking to me. This is a sensation that’s easy for me to recall since I walk in the woods and get spiderwebs in my face fairly frequently. Then I just imagine slash feel myself energetically picking off the webs and letting them fly in the wind.

The reality is that energy is held in the subconscious, and the subconscious does not know the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined. So as long as you have a mental picture or felt sensation that signals to your subconscious that you are clearing other people’s energy, it usually works. It’s so simple, but you do have to take the time to actually do it.

The last point that I think really helps me find the balance between my native impulse to care so much, and not carrying other people’s stuff around is that I’m finally living my purpose as a healer empath.

Part of the reason I used to attract personal relationships with those who needed healing is that the natural healer in me craved an outlet. I desired to feel purpose and like I was giving my soul gifts of being a healer.

Using my skills in a professional setting is what gave me the clarity to separate “client” from “friend” or “partner.” Now I try to only heal people who’ve asked for it, and who are giving some sort of energy exchange for my healing services.

Now that’s not to say that I don’t still offer my loved ones a healing presence or a listening ear when they ask for it. But I no longer feel compelled to try to heal, fix, or change everyone I see because I have a container for that which is now clear and separate from the rest of my life.

If you notice you struggle with wanting to fix or change the people around you, it’s pretty likely that you’re a healer with unrealized gifts. You may want to consider finding a modality that calls to you, and studying it to the point that you feel comfortable having your own clients. Even if you don’t charge money for it, having a dedicated space to live your purpose will help you feel like you’ve “done enough,” and can put down your healing impulses in those relationships where you’d really rather have mutuality rather than always being the one in the support role.

Conclusion

I hope all that helps. I know that, for many of us, caring is something we just can’t change, nor do we want to change it most of the time. I think caring about other people, places, plants, animals, and ecosystems is what brings out the very best in all of us. I would never want people to feel like they should shut down their ability to care.

But at the same time, we need to keep ourselves resourced. As the world gets more and more crazy and demanding of our concern, there’s a way in which staying grounded and resilient really is a revolutionary act.

As Audre Lorde said so powerfully, ““Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

In this age of mass propaganda, manufactured division, and extreme fear peddling by the media, it really is an act of radical resistance to center our own peace. Even when loved ones around us are literally dying from the mental health crises this modern world produces, it’s up to us to choose our own resourcing — to return to what Internal Family Systems calls the 8 C’s of Self: Curiosity, Compassion, Calm, Clarity, Courage, Confidence, Creativity, and Connectedness.

We can’t do that if we’re letting ourselves be constantly pulled around by the personal and political emergencies that pop up around us everyday.

So, I’m grateful to my friend. Because grief reminds me what really matters. Death gives life significance. And while I feel sure he’s in a better place now, I also want the loss of him to create something positive here on earth. I’m absolutely sure that’s what he would have wanted, and so it’s a good way to honor his life.

I really hope that on some ethereal level he feels all the hearts he cracked open with his passing. And I hope that all of us can have the courage to keep opening our hearts, even in the face of so much continued tragedy.

I’m dedicating this episode to SeekHealing, which honestly could really use your help right now. Due to the budget cuts and shifting winds of the current political climate, we’re greatly in need of individual donor support. If you need the power of human connection to heal your lonely heart, I hope you’ll join a meeting which are in-person in western NC, and online. You can find the calendar of events at SeekHealing.org/calendar.

And if you have any amount of money to invest in a more connected world, please consider donating at SeekHealing.org/donate.

Finally, if you want to continue this conversation, feel free to drop a note for me in the comments, or find me at ionsul ferrin on all the socials.

Thanks so much for being here friends. Be sweet to yourselves, tell the people you love how much they mean to you, and I’ll see you next week.